Lost - Comic-Con Report

As I awaited the Lost panel to start in Hall H Saturday morning, I felt bad for the multitudes of people who were still standing in line outside the convention center, behind the convention center and all the way down the road behind the Marriott hotel. If you were a fan of Lost, but not of Heroes, you simply had to sit in line and then sit through the Heroes panel in order to see Lost; there was no way around it.

The Lost panel was quite a change from Heroes, as rather than the entire cast appearing on stage, only Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse made up the panel. Later, though, a "surprise guest" came out: Matthew Fox. However, nearly everything discussed came from Lindelof and Cuse.

Things started off with a few videos, including an ad for DVDs for last season. Another video consisted of Lindelof and Cuse talking about how, in these new DVDs, they will present all of the flash-forwards as an extra and in the correct time sequence. As they discussed that, the screen distorted and "poof!" the two of them were coming to us from the future. Lindelof sported an eye patch and a "Yanks 2010 Champs" t-shirt. Cuse wore an "Obama - Four More Years" t-shirt. Throughout the segment they would refer to the then-ended Lost, with bleeped out references to things that were revealed (pissed-off fans had gouged out Lindelof's eye).

Another video shown came from "an anonymous source," and was filmed in a very True Hollywood Story-like manner. It went on about the Oceanic Six and questioned their story and who they really were. I wasn't much sure of the point of that video.

Cuse and Lindelof started out by plugging liveautographs.com, a site where folks can buy autographed memorabilia from the show, with the money all going to charity. Lindelof had a "Trust Snape" t-shirt. I want that t-shirt!

Both Cuse and Lindelof had giant cups emblazoned with 'Dharma Initiative', saying they were official sponsors of the panel and also provided them with stuff to give away to attendees who asked questions at the mic. A man came to the podium -- clearly an actor -- named "Hans," from the Dharma Initiative. He talked about the testing that went on in the booth (see my earlier post on that) and that the results were "abysmal." Apparently they filmed everyone who went into the booth to answer the questions and we got to see a bit of that on-screen. Was pretty funny to see a guy dressed as a Stormtrooper answering the questions. Even funnier was seeing Cuse and Lindelof in the booth and what their answers were to the questions. To the question "Who would you sacrifice if you had to," Lindelof said "Carlton Cuse."

A handful of people who "passed the tests" was brought on stage (at least one of which was an actor), and we were told they were going to "the next level" in the Initiative back at the booth. Then they were taken off-stage.

Then we went right to attendee questions:

Did the island travel when the hatch blew and the sky turned purple? Lindelof: "No., but something did happen."

Will we see Jin and Locke again? Jin will still be on the show in some form. We have not seen the last of those two. Both characters will still be on the show.

Which is their favorite episode and season: Cuse: 'The Constant'. Season 1. Lindelof: Season 1 finale. Season 4.

Is the cityscape reflection in the water in ads significant. Cuse: No. Folks are reading too much into it.

Will we see Rousseau's flashback. Answer: We will see her "story" -- they don't want to refer to these as "flashbacks" anymore.

They will start shooting in three weeks if a strike doesn't get in the way. All episodes will be back-to-back, uninterrupted.

Did the movie "Lost Horizon" influence the show? Cuse said he'd seen the movie, but he seemed strangely dismissive about whether or not it influenced the show.

Vincent will make it to the end of the show.

Will Kate and Jack wind up together in the end? Of course, they could not answer that.

Will Kate be able to see Sawyer again? Yes.

Will we see what happens to the five people in the zodiac boat? Yes. Interesting note: On-set, the actors call the other castaways from Flight 815, the ones roaming around the background, "socks."

How did Daniel know about the secondary protocol? Because it was written in his notebook. The notebook will figure prominently in season five.

How old is Richard Alpert? Cuse: "Quite old" How many toes does he have? We will learn a lot more about his history and will see him barefoot in the very near future.

As you can see in this image, some of the attendees were ... interesting.

The final question was about the name they chose for Locke in the casket (Jeremy Bentham) and how it's related to Panopticon. The person asked if this meant the people on the island were being watched and if they know the person who's watching them. The crowd ooohed and aaaahed over that for a second, and as Cuse was about to answer, one of the Dharma Initiative test subjects, the young actor, ran on-stage saying he had videotaped what he saw and was going to share it with the world. After a few weak calls for security to remove the kid from the stage, they told him to go ahead and play the footage.

The video was from the kid's video camera and showed him going in the booth, then him recording the video shown to them. It showed the familiar Dr. Candle, saying his name is really (and I'm going by what it sounded like) Pierre Chen, going on about them having to help save the world, his experiments with the island and time fluctuations, etc. He also said that he had already come from the future, that the video being shown was from 30 years in the past. Finally Hans caught the kid taping and the kid took off.

Aaand ... that was it. I'm sure the video will be shown at some point as part of the Dharma Initiative website, so any details or clues you might find from it will be better found by watching it yourself.